Letter to Editor on Foster Care and Opioids

“Children harmed by their parents should of course be protected. But any proposed approach to the opioid crisis that defaults to sending children to foster care once the specter of drug use is raised, and that excludes their parents, is deeply flawed.”

Emma Ketteringham, Managing Director of BxD’s Family Defense Practice, responds to an editorial published in The New York Times called “The Opioid Plague’s Youngest Victims.” Emma challenges presumptions in the piece that children whose parents have used drugs should automatically be placed in foster care. She highlights that “placing a child in foster care can be more detrimental than addressing a parent’s drug use as a family.”